Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Programmer's Guide (Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Reference Library)

This was the last REAL "instruction manual" I ever received with a retail boxed software purchase. My VB5 Pro box came with 3 books and this Programmer's Guide was the biggest one.It's written clear and concise, with examples, call-outs, plenty of white space. Professionally written with zero typos I can recall.The book is about 2-3" thick if I remember. It's definitely a hefty book, about the same size as my hardcover copy of Stephen King "The Stand" (one of King's largest books).This would be 98% relevant to VB6 programmers as well. But virtually useless to "Visual Basic .NET" which is an entirely different product, not sharing any ancestry with all prior versions of Visual Basic. Microsoft SHOULD have called VB.NET something else like "Basic for .NET Framework" so nobody would mistake it as "the next version of Visual Basic after 6.0" which it is not.To this day (2018/10/28), some of my favorite (and even some still currently maintained, very actively developed software are written in VB5/6, like the tremendous Xyplorer file-manager for Windows.VB5/6 are absolute compact, performance & efficiency BEASTS compared to the slug that is the Microsoft.NET Framework-encumbered "Visual Basic.NET". The runtime for VB6 (msvbm60.dll) is 1MB and included with almost all Windows OS by default. VB5/6 give the option of compiling to P-code or to Native code (which uses the LINK.EXE from Visual C++ and gives the option of generating .PDB Debug Symbols.)Whatever compiling options you choose, VB5/6 will produce an executable that performs with 90% less memory required (probably 95-98% less memory required, honestly, considering the 200-500MB minimums for most standard .NET Framework applications).The best part is, your user interface is capable of loading instantly and responding INSTANTLY to user input with no apparent delay whatsoever between when the user clicks a UI element, and when that element responds. For example, clicking File > Edit > Preferences will likely cause a Settings dialog to appear instantly, whereas a .NET Framework-based application will hesitate ~250ms-1.0s on a modern machine as it loads its hundreds of MB of behemoth runtime files into memory.This kind of delay may seem small, but these delays are what make the difference between users feeling your application is responsive and performing well, vs the frustration of feeling not entirely in control of your computer, leaving users to wonder "Did my click register? Is it loading? Do I need to click again? What's happening? Why was that so slow?"If you really wanna take VB5/6 to the next level, you MUST acquire Bruce McKinney's classic Hardcore Visual Basic, probably the best VB book ever written. I know personally that Hardcore Visual Basic has been critical in the development of Xyplorer, especially many of its very, very advanced programming techniques used to optimize the speed and efficiency to the absolute limits of the machine. (The developer Donald Lessau is so hard core himself, that he used to hold frequent programming contests challenging developers to submit basic routines that outperformed his reference implementations, and then he'd publish the results down to the milliseconds of execution for each. And of course: share all the code for free.)

Also it doesn't have many pages, but it does contain many useful concepts and information.

While this book is a fairly good reference, it certainly is dreadful as a programming guide. Little things annoy throughout, such as the author constantly mentioning new topics only to cop-out and say "see Chapter X for more details". Some sections have this at the end of every paragraph, which makes is read like 'stereo instructions'. Also, while most programming books are quite dry, this one takes the cake for most 'sleep inducing'- it is a stream of information with no mention of possible uses or implementation. As an ASP/VBS developer I thought it would be easy to move from VBS to VB, but not with this book. Avoid if you are new to visual basic!